Читать книгу Come On In! - Charles Bukowski - Страница 19

one of the problems is

that when most people

sit down to write a poem

they think,

“now I am going to write a

poem”

and then

they go on to write a poem

that

sounds like a poem

or what they think

a poem should sound like.

this is one of their

problems.

of course, there are other

problems:

those writers of poems

that sound like poems

think that they then must

go around

reading them

to other people.

this, they say, is done

for status and recognition

(they are careful

not to mention

vanity

or the need for

instantaneous

approbation

from some

sparse, addled

crowd).

the best poems

it seems to me

are written out of

an ultimate

need.

and once the poem is

written,

the only need

after that

is to write

another.

and the silence

of the printed page

is the

best response

to a finished

work.

in decades past

I once warned

some poet-friends

of mine

about the masturbatory

nature of poetry readings

done just

for the applause of

a handful of

idiots.

“isolate yourself and

do your work and if you

must mix, then do it

with those who

have no interest at all

in what you consider

so

important.”

such anger,

such a self-righteous

response

did I receive then

from my poet-friends

that it seemed to me

that I had exactly

proved my

point.

after that,

we all drifted

apart.

and that solved just

one of my

problems

and I suppose

just one of

theirs.